A Christian Homework Assignment

1. We experience the universe as smelly. This smellibility means that the universe is graspable by our sense of smell.
2. Either this smelly universe and the finite noses so well suited to smelling it are the products of a Really Big Cheese, or both smellibility and intelligence are the products of a blind chance.
3. Not blind chance.
4. Therefore this smelly universe and the finite noses so well suited to smelling it are the products of a Really Big Cheese.

Makes about as much sense. I love people who think that putting things in lists like that means they are doing logic. Point 3 is especially amusing.

Ugh. I got really curious recently, and tried to hunt up arguments for the existence of God that might convince me, a former devout believer who grew up and “put away childish things.” It was, all in all, really discouraging – most sites set up a sort of straw man atheist who didn’t grow up in a Christian culture and who doesn’t believe in God only because she’s “never heard of him.”

Wow. Um. There must be some better arguments for the existence of a deity than that. Right?

Because seriously, those are the least convincing things I’ve ever seen. I feel like it might be sort of fun to print out a big ol’ list of logical fallacies and those arguments and start annotating…except I don’t have enough time for a project that massive.

But anyway, I actually think this is kind of an interesting and subversive homework assigment, especially this bit:

Explain which attributes of God are supported by the argument. For example, Is the God proven to exist actually a personal God?

So many attempts and proving the existence of God (including this one) take a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach – a Deist-type god must exist, therefore a personal God must exist! A ressurected Jesus existed because God exists, and since God exists then Jesus must have been ressurected!

Why is this called “argument from consciousness” ? It’s actually an “argument from intelligibility” (and a bad one). But consciousness as such is not part of it.

I suspect that my first response would be to sit the writer down and give them some basic tuition in logic, the use of it, and logical fallacies, the spotting of them…

“Explain how you think that the argument might affect your non-believer intellectually and emotionally.”

Ultimately, emotion is the trump card that will sway the argument in favor of belief. It just “feels” like there “should” be a god out there. In fact, as a scientist, one of the most difficult things to do is to distance oneself from his/her biases and emotions and accept the facts and the logical conclusions one can infer from them. I learned this first-hand in graduate school, when I was adamantly positive that the molecule I had been working with for months had a particular structure, as shown by all previous studies, and I was shocked (and elated) to find I was terrible wrong when opposing data proved otherwise. This is part of the allure of science. Scientists are mere mortals, and have strong prejudices like anyone else. The “cold fusion” debacle was a very public example of this, to this day people are still trying to find ways to fund this junk science, claiming it’s a vast conspiracy and cover-up by the academic elites.

But theological arguments are not scientific and rely on faith and emotion for propulsion. And there is nothing to them but bias, prejudice and assertion. Otherwise, maybe all religions have it right. Or, using Occam’s razor, none of them.

Hm. What qualifies as “another reliable Internet source?” If we fisk all of the arguments here, can this blog post be cited as a source in the paper?

Point 3 just comes totally out of the left field. First you’re surprised and then you go “WTFBBQ?!”. It just doesn’t make any sense.

OK so I just read as many of the other arguments as I could without becoming disgusted/angry/overwhelmed with laughter.

I noticed the essay (or whatever it is) is from 1994 and references many atheist stereotypes. For instance, we are refered to as “those who refuse to believe”.

Also most of these arguments are just silly if you don’t start with the assumtion that the christian god exists, but he disregards any alternate explanation he may have heard as only logical if you start with the assumption that there is no god.

How are we expected to buy something when its not even consistent within its own framework?

Sorry if this is a rant.

Evaluate arguments 6, 14, 16, 18, and 19 and select the one that you would feel most comfortable using when trying to convince an open-minded non-believer in the existence of God.

Surely they’d be too embarrassed to use such weak arguments to try to convince anyone else?

Point of fact for theists: I am an atheist because I don’t find your arguments convincing and because you lack the evidence to back up your claims. You need evidence and better arguments. Please don’t waste either of our time with this rubbish.

14. The Moral Argument
1. Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good and avoid evil.
2. Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the “religious” one.
3. But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
4. Therefore the “religious” view of reality is correct.

Point one is false. I can demonstrate this by punching you in the eye.
Point two is a false dichotomy. There may be other views that are not considered here.
Point three isn’t true either. I may hold to the idea of moral obligations without holding to a belief in gods. Similarly I may hold to a belief in gods but not to one of moral obligations. I may even worship a deity that demands I exploit others.
Ergo the stated conclusion is a pile of poo.

I would go with Argument from Authority:

1. Whoever put this list together is dumb.
2. There are smarter people than they, who believe in god(s).
3. So there is even more reason to believe.

If you want to pass, pick the dumbest arguments against the weakest proposition you can choose. Put in a couple of QED’s and Therefors in – don’t worry about being logical.

But avoid ending with “even the dumbest professor, in the weakest christian college could see from this that God exists exactly as defined by our college’s founder(s), president, and board”.

I think it is a trick question. If the professor has any integrity to religion at all, “blind faith” not blind chance should be the ideal.

And don’t they actually claim the universe is a Mystery? Or do they interpret it as intelligible as a Mystery? Which is basically meaningless, circular, false logic.

i’d actually love for someone to go through these, one by one, and point out what’s wrong with them simply. could someone do that? like just a sentence for each? thank you! (like the other student, i’m also an atheist at a catholic college!)

p.s. some of them i get are obviously wrong, like #12, the argument from the origin of the idea of god.

12. just ask someone about heaven, a perfect place – they’ll all have different answers of what it’s like, based on their earthy experiences. humans can imagine a lot of things. just read any fiction.

13. just because you can think of something doesn’t make it exist. (unicorns, fairies, the devil). also this proof works for the non-existence of the devil if you do it backwards.

could someone finish it up? i’d really appreciate it!

29. Humans lived among dinosaurs (see, “The Flintstones”)

“Look at my hand! It’s like it was perfectly designed to slip into this glove! God is amazing!”

Tom,

You can find an explanation of why the basic ones are bunk at rational wiki.

It covers the Morality, Ontological, Cosmological, and considerably more humorous Oeneological arguments, of which these are all basically re-flavorings.

Instead of #20, I prefer: “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Wager.”

Work it out for yourself.

I started at one and I love the blatant falsity of the premises. ” But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it.” Er, no, that’s not how reality works. May I point out radioactive elements as an example?

By two I thought “really, he can’t get better than arguments from Thomas Aquinas? What crap. I’m finished.” It made me think of this clip from Billy Madison http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7w64fbqYQY

The “first cause” arguments have a pretty simple and glaring flaw in them. Everything we see that is caused, or comes in and out of being, is simple a change in the state of matter and energy within the universe, not an actual coming into or out of being. Matter and energy are observed to be neither created nor destroyed, so there is no valid argument to be made that they MUST have been created or come into being.

Tom has a great idea – lets all pick one of these 20 arguments, and detail what’s wrong with it??

Here’s where argument #1 fails:

Short version: it’s a false assumption followed by a non sequitur claim that God exists.

Long version: Among the many questionable assertions and poorly defined terms in #1, a key assumption is that “Nothing changes itself.” There are a variety of counter examples showing “nothing changes itself” is false. Ex: I can lock my watch in a sealed lead box with 20″ thick walls, and it will keep time just fine.

If the assumption is false, any conclusions based on that assumption are unjustified. This is sufficient grounds to scrap the argument, but lets carry on as though this weren’t a problem… there are still errors in the argument!

Notice the unjustified conclusion made here: “we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by ‘God.'”

Even IF that first part were true (remember, we’ve shown it isn’t), how can they claim that that force is “God”?

This is a classic “non sequitur” — a claim that in now way follows from the argument given. If we ask “Why God? Why not Thor? Why not Brahma? Why not the FSM? Why not something we can’t imagine?” we realize they’ve just slipped God in there without justification. They could have just as easily said “This is one of the things meant by `the Germanic Deities.'”

A second alternative they fail to consider is that their logic or assumptions are wrong (which we’ve show is the case) and that’s why their conclusions don’t jive with reality.

Note, however, how this logic can seem pretty convincing if we’ve already made the assumption that God exists and is the only such option for such an “outside force” (as many Christian’s have). But persuasive and correct are different things. Since you can’t assume the thing you’re trying to prove, that would also kill this argument.

Their summary: “Briefly, if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothing that can cause the universe to change. But it does change. Therefore there must be something in addition to the material universe.”

Point by point summary of why #1 fails:

This we’ve show to be wrong: “if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothing that can cause the universe to change”.

This observation, then, means nothing: “But it does change. ”

Therefore, this statement is unjustified and might as well have been randomly generated by a computer: “Therefore there must be something in addition to the material universe.”

## End of rambling comment. 😉

I think the best proof (of at least Christianity) is that Jesus came back within the lifetime of His disciples (like he said he would), all the dead crawled out of the ground, the rapture occurred, and then the world came to an end.

Oh wait, that didn’t happen. Never mind.

Regardless, I think this would be an easy assignment to do for an atheist. You could honestly critique each of the arguments and explain why they don’t hold water for you. Of course the rationale for the arguments from a Christian perspective is that the Christians **want** them to be true so any argument at all is music to their ears. The arguments are not convincing, though, if you don’t already possess a psychological need for there to be arguments for the existence of God.

Also what Steve said about Deism and theism (and Christianity) is very true.

Aristotle help me I actually read them all. I like that the ones singled out for the students are (arguably) the worst arguments given. Numbers 16 and 19 especially make me want to poke my eyes out. I almost want to cry Poe.

As a philosophy professor, i will now go huddle in a corner and weep for our future….

Let me see if I can play this logic game.

1. All things need a cause outside of itself
2. The world is finite
3. We will call the cause of the first thing “God” to break the infinite recess.
4. Therefore God interacts in our world
5. Therefore mankind is fallen and sinful by nature and deserves Hell
6. Therefore there is a personal God who can save you if you believe in Him
7. Therefore God hates fags and fags should not be able to get married.
8. Therefore you owe me $50. Now pay up!

Tom, here goes.

1- Fallacy of composition. It applies observations made within the universe to the universe as a whole; this is the same error in reasoning as saying “atoms are colorless, I am made of atoms, therefore, I am colorless.” (This is particularly true in light of the universe possibly being literally “changeless” as a whole, i.e., a zero-sum game; watch some of Lawrence Krauss’s stuff for more on that notion.)

2- Appeal to personal incredulity, and failure of parsimony. The actual existence of infinities has not been falsified; “it seems weird/silly” is not a rebuttal Further, the universe itself might be an uncaused cause of what we observe within the universe; adding God into the explanation adds no explanatory power and is therefore not preferred. Further, even if there is some uncaused first cause originating outside our universe, there is no reason to suppose it is anything resembling God.

3- Premise (6) is false as a matter of physics; see, e.g., virtual particles. Further, “something coming into being” is an extremely Aristotelian, non-atomistic view of objects, which is extremely questionable (see, e.g., the Ship of Theseus paradox for an illustration of how “things” are really just mental shorthand our mind separates out, rather than real separate and distinct entities). Nonetheless, this is a subtle and actually pretty good argument for God — Leibniz was a brilliant thinker. It’s worth understanding better; do some Googling and you’ll find comprehensive statements of the argument and comprehensive rebuttals.

4- All judgments from comparative value ARE subjective; merely because we all live according to such subjective judgments does not rebut them, contrary to the Reply, which falsely assumes sincerity = objectivity. Further, the ontological argument can also be used to argue for all sorts of crazy things, like a being of both perfect good AND perfect evil (yay Zoroastrianism!), or, in Dawkins’ amusing rebuttal, a God who is the smelliest being in the universe, “a pre-eminently peerless stinker.”

5- Appeal to personal incredulity: “this is all so amazing that God must have made it!” Fractals, natural selection, crystal formation, gravitation force, and a number of other staggeringly well-understood natural processes are capable of effects that have “an intricately beautiful order and regularity that can fill even the most casual observer with wonder.” Further, premise 3 is based on an equivocation of “chance,” equating it with arbitrary randomness, which is not at ALL the way physical laws work. Further, we have no empirical reason to believe any natural phenomenon ever observed was designed by an intelligent force (hence the utter scientific failure of the intelligent design creationism movement).

6- “Whatever begins to exist” is, again, a statement based on faulty Aristotelian objectification. Everything we observe apparently beginning to exist is not a new thing-in-itself, but merely a reconfiguration of preexisting matter/energy; therefore, we cannot say we have observed anything ever TRULY beginning to exist. Secondly, premise (1) again commits the fallacy of composition, applying observations within the universe to the universe as a whole; we therefore have no reason to believe premise (1). Nor do we have any real reason to believe premise (2); the state “preexisting” the Big Bang is today hypothesized to be the quantum vacuum, which, as far as we know, is irreducible and does not “begin to exist” in any meaningful sense.

7- Another fallacy of composition, and another use of outmoded Aristotelian objectification. Further, there are entities that could account for the existence of the universe (such as the quantum vacuum) that “transcend space and time” but in no way resemble a personal cause or a god. The argument’s reply even admits as much, although it notably and dishonestly attempts to imply that such a transcendent necessary entity is unknown or unknowable except through divine revelation (not necessarily the case).

8- Fallacy of composition again. Also, argument from personal incredulity: “Things work in a certain way in our universe, and that way looks complicated to me, therefore God!” Further, it makes no sense to say that there MUST be a transcendent creative mind; given the probable origin of the universe from an initial compressed high-energy state, from which everything else has subsequently developed, it makes perfect sense that everything we observe, having derived from an early unity, should continue to flow necessarily from that early unity.

9- God of the gaps: “If we don’t understand it, therefore God.” Lightning, clouds, stars, earthquakes, volcanoes, disease, mental illness, and a whole host of other things formerly thought to be “[events] whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God” have been demonstrated to have manifestly natural causes; on the other hand, nothing thought to have a natural cause has ever been relegated firmly to the product of divine intervention. It is thus inductively reasonable to suppose that miracles do not occur and are simply human misapprehensions; see Hume’s argument against miracles and Michael Shermer’s “why people believe weird things.” Further, there is no scientific, peer-reviewed evidence for miracles; all evidence comes from highly flawed and easily manipulated personal anecdotes, widely considered the weakest possible form of evidence.

10- Fallacy of division; assumes without evidence that rational sources cannot be constituted from (or originate within) non-rational sources. Further, from evolutionary biology we have reason to believe that intelligibility and intelligence have survival value and will therefore be selected for; this is a well-evidence natural origin of these phenomena and should therefore be preferred over a speculative supernatural origin. Further, the many *flaws* in our thoughts, memories, and perceptions are well accounted for by the evolutionary, naturalistic account of our development, while the theistic counter-proposal flounders in explaining things like agenticity, confirmation bias, the high incidence of false memory, etc.

[don’t wanna make this too long, so part 2 to come shortly]

16. The Argument from Desire

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

I desire a cheap, easy to use jet pack that I can use to commute to work quickly. Such a thing does not exist. Just because you have a desire, does not mean that something exists to satisfy that desire. But often, such desires are what drive us to solve problems and invent new tools.

2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.

Well, that’s just a baseless assertion. How can anyone claim to know what another person does or does not desire? Maybe some people have such desires, but as you can see from point 1, that does not mean that something exists to satisfy the desire.

3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.
4. This something is what people call “God” and “life with God forever.”

These just follow from the faulty premise.

oh, good laird. this takes me back to my days in xtian theology classes in Div school. how hard i tried to “understand” the “logic” of those texts/arguments. and failed. literally. at my grad school getting a B- was tantamount to failing, and that’s what i got in “intro to xtian theology.” i just could not do it.

for me at least, the hardest part was always, “well, we can made these fancy arguments that put most people to sleep and impress the philosophy department, therefore Christianity is true.” i was always like, “um, but what about the Hindus? the Native Americans? all the other religious mythologies that existed before and after Christianity? if you’re saying you’re ‘right’ why can’t they, also?” and i never, ever got a good answer.

i will say that at least my classes in Judaism and Islam lacked this particular annoyance. i don’t know if that’s because i had better professors, or because those faiths aren’t quite as arrogant about their supposed rightness. nobody does “because i say so, that’s why” like xtians.

anyway, Pazuzu is real, and he is coming for you. as a Sumerian Emesal speaker, i assure you this is true. fear his bifurcated wing wrath.

It would be interesting to know the answers to two questions, to judge the bias of the course:

1. Are the students allowed to conclude that the arguments are fallacious?
2. When asked to discuss the weaknesses of the arguements, are the students allowed to consult atheistic websites as “another reliable internet source”?

[continued]

11- “Truth” is a largely subjective notion, generally meaning correspondence of an idea with a given observation. The idea that eternal truth can exist is not established, and even probably incoherent. Further, as the argument itself admits, it’s based in the ancient Greek theory of knowledge, with Platonic forms ‘n’ such, where if I can understand eternal truth, then that means there is a Form of Eternal Truth floating around there somewhere. Needless to say, we have no reason to accept ancient Greek epistemology as more accurate than a scientifically informed epistemology, which renders the argument completely incoherent.

12- Virtually all definitions of God define God in terms of what we are not, and/or of what we are, merely extended maximally (humans cannot actually conceive of infinity or eternity; try it; therefore, the idea of God as infinite/eternal in our minds is just an entity that is limited but REALLY REALLY EXTENSIVE). Both of these views are inherently anthropomorphic, defining God in terms of man, and therefore *obviously* can arise from within man. The argument itself realizes this and only attempts to undermine by appeals to personal incredulity (“Is that really enough?” “Does that seem farfetched?”) rather than actual argument.

13- Rehash of arguments 4 and 7. As a side note, my reply to arguments from modal logic — indeed, with all “deductive” arguments for God or the supernatural — is that they are unconvincing without empirical experimental evidence to back them up. If I make a perfect logical argument that the clouds must be colored chartreuse, but every cloud ever observed has been white and no evidence has ever been found of a chartreuse cloud, only two conclusions are possible: Either everyone’s senses are constantly being deceived, or else I’m full of shit. Which is more likely?

14- We have no reason to accept the objective — i.e., mind-independent — existence of moral values. Think about it for yourself: “Good” and “bad” in your own mind describe your (subjective!!!) evaluation of the correlation between a proposed action and a proposed standard of conduct (a “moral value,” let’s say). “Goodness” and “badness” therefore subsist subjectively in your mind, and are not objectively measurable properties of the universe like mass and gravity. Further, even if objective moral values exist, they need not come from God (see, e.g., Kant’s categorical imperative, which attempts to objectively establish rules of conduct based on pure reason); in fact, if they DO come from God — who is himself a mind — then objective moral values do NOT exist, since moral values are simply whatever God says they are.

15- The argument is based on an outright lie. EVERYONE believes it is occasionally okay to go against your gut instincts and simply place your trust in an entity better qualified to make decisions. If you’re a conservative Christian, and your conscience tells you that homosexuality is not sinful, would somebody like Kreeft say it’s better for you to obey your conscience, or better to set aside your misgivings and “trust in God’s commandments,” hmm? Likewise, we secularists submit our moral impulses to the scrutiny of reason all the damn time. Basically, this argument is based on an equivocation regarding the definition of “conscience.” If we define “conscience” in a broad sense, as “that which we believe to be preferable courses of action,” then the criticism of this argument becomes easily seen as ridiculous: it effectively says, “isn’t it remarkable that even the most consistent subjectivist believes it is not preferable for anyone to deliberately do something he doesn’t believe is preferable?” Uh, no, it’s not that remarkable. 😛

16- The existence of a desire which nothing can satisfy is not established. Further, even if there were, the evolutionary imperative toward maximum survival and propagation would be a much better explanation than God.

17- Babies die shrieking in agony due to natural diseases or disorders. Therefore, there is no God. You either see this one or you don’t.

18- This is formally termed the weak argument from miracles. It’s actually one of the better arguments. It’s flawed for two reasons: First of all, the counter-argument from inconsistent revelations. A ton of people have experienced something “divine,” but nobody can agree on what it is; this already means that most if not all such experiencers are incorrect in their evaluations of their experience, and it’s therefore QUITE conceivable that “so many people could have been so utterly wrong.” Secondly, anyone who’s ever taken certain drugs or worn the “God helmet” or experienced certain types of stroke or epilepsy can tell you that profound religious experiences can easily originate within demonstrable natural processes. It is more likely that religious experiencers are encountering a natural phenomenon than contacting a supernatural phenomenon. As a side note, try running a Bayesian analysis on the whole “at least one person must be right” hypothesis and you’ll see that God, even granting virtually the entire argument, is exceptionally improbable.

19- The vast majority of people through recorded history also profoundly believed some people were simply worthy of (and destined to) slavery. Is it more plausible to believe they were right about this, or wrong? Effectively, this argument commits the fallacy of appeal to a common belief. When it comes to physics and metaphysics, it is safe to say that almost everyone in history has been almost entirely wrong about almost anything. To make common beliefs, with their track record, a source of proof for God is sheer arrogance with regard to the human mind.

20- A friend of mine put together a good and quick summary of why Pascal’s Wager should not be taken seriously as an argument for God: http://thechaoscosmos.com/?p=136

Thanks for reading! Hope this helped, Tom.

Let’s start with the one you quoted:

“1.We experience the universe as intelligible. This intelligibility means that the universe is graspable by intelligence.
2.Either this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence, or both intelligibility and intelligence are the products of blind chance.
3.Not blind chance.
4.Therefore this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence.”

Point 1 is demonstrably false. That’s why we invented religion, homeopathy and the rest of the pseudo-scientific nonsense. In addition, efforts to get more people to understand what the top scientists can do have met with limited success.

Point 2 is a false dichotomy. For example, the Universe could be designed, but intelligent beings not so.

Point 3 is, as said by others, just assertion.

Explain how you think that the argument might affect your non-believer intellectually and emotionally.”

Well right off the bat I’d say it would reinforce the negative stereotype of Christians being stupid and gullible.

If any of these arguments were presented on the interwebs the emotional affect might be to produce ad hominem arguments from otherwise rational people, i.e. “You guys are a bunch of assholes, therefor there is no god”.

Really when you think about it, the above argument is every bit as valid as the arguments from the list.

Hey guys,
I am the student who sent in the question. Thanks so much for all your responses!
I’m attending the school because my mom works there as a professor (even though she isn’t Christian, either). The philosophy typically doesn’t influence any of my coursework (it’s a Methodist university, so it’s not anywhere near as heavy-handed as, say, Liberty or something; I’ve had valid biology classes with no mention of ID, etc.), but this class really takes the cake. I’ve actually been really open with my professor and classmates and have been responding to this, and every assignment, from my atheist/humanist point of view. I feel like it’s extremely important to represent the atheist community well and to let people know that atheists aren’t a group of evil, hateful freaks, so it isn’t an option for me to pretend to believe something that I don’t just to get through a class, as several people suggested.
Thanks so much for your funny and intelligent thoughts (and sympathy)!
Katie

This assignment looks less like it was designed by an evangelical, and more like it was an exercise set by an atheist, for any thinking student is going to have a hard time finding any of those arguments they can support, as requested.

If it is a writing class, then the proof need not be rigorous, just well phrased. If it is a logic course, then a faulty axiom is no bar to a logical progression thereafter to an incorrect conclusion. If it is a philosophy class, then failing to prove the postulate is just as valid as succeeding, and can be expressed in satire.

I once made a convincing argument for a Flat Earth, to a large audience. I didn’t need to believe in it in order to find a way to make it plausible and convincing. Alas, a substantial number of the attendees went away believing what I had said.

@ theNP: I used to live in a town with a fundamentalist “Christian” college. (I put “Christian” in quotes because they claim Jesus is love . . . yet they were anything but loving towards their fellow human beings. Intolerant bastards.) Their rules say that if the non-student SPOUSE of a student is seen having an alcoholic drink even OFF CAMPUS, the student will be expelled. Um, hello? Anybody remember the “wine into water” thing from the Marriage at Cana?

*crickets*

Oh, yeah, they claim that “wine” was actually unfermented grape juice…. *face/palm*

Yeah, and women wearing pants is cause for expulsion, too. I wouldn’t have attended that school for a million bucks. Although, honestly, I might have enjoyed seeing just how many feathers I could ruffle and how fast I could get expelled…..

I feel her pain. I was still a Christian when I chose my college, and only became an Atheist last year. Perhaps that’s what happened to her?

@katie:

Good to know you’re up front with them about your lack of belief. So how do you approach an assignment like this? Do you point out the obvious flaws in the arguments? How does your prof react?

First of all, this.

Secondly, I can’t resist pointing out to this guy and his take on the Kalam argument. I like watching his videos. Maybe you’ll enjoy it as well.

Therefore, FSM exists!

“Explain how you think that the argument might affect your non-believer intellectually and emotionally.”

“your non-believer”

What are we pets now?

hipopotamo,
I’m honored. Have fun translating the Argument from Dizziness. Maybe take some Dramamine beforehand. 🙂

Your cat argument is intriguing. Whenever I try to count my cat’s legs, she wants to play and grabs my hand, so I never find out for certain. Ow. Ow ow.

@hipopotamo,

I see that you too have had the divine revelation that these logic proofs many times end with the conclusion that a wealth transfer (tithe) needs to happen.

1. State a loaded assumption with desired conclusion embedded but slightly hidden
2. Go through several steps revealing the built-in desired conclusion.
3. Throw in a couple non-sequiturs along the way.
4. Conclude that the faithful then needs to give you their money.

I’m pretty sure that is logically equivalent to “everything that begins to exist has a cause”.

@Robert W:

I’ll tackle that: The problem with the Kalam argument is that it makes the assumption that the universe had a beginning, when the truth is that we don’t know either way. The theoretical expansion event 13.7 billion years ago represents the beginning of the universe in its current state. That does not rule out the possibility of prior states, or any other myriad of possibilities that do not require an external cause.

The claim that there had to be an external cause, and that we know that cause has to be eternal is complete conjecture, because we have no basis for comparison. How many things have you seen created by eternal creators?

How many things have you seen created by eternal creators?

Ah, everything?

@ JSug:
I discussed the morality argument for this assignment. One of the problems I have with debating issues with Christians/really zealous religious people in general is that, no matter what you say, they most often will just “refute” your logic by pulling some illogical craziness out, or quoting lines from their holy book of choice, as if that is relevant. I could have gone on and on about the logical flaws in that argument, so I tried to keep that part of the essay brief and focused more on explaining that, while atheists(/at least, this particular atheist) don’t feel a divine obligation to morality, most of us do feel obligated to our own consciences and to our loved ones and community, or humanity in general, to try to do what we think is right. I quoted heavily from the book Good Without God by Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard.
My mom, the closeted agnostic professor, is actually in an impromptu and unexplained meeting with the Dean of my school as I speak. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it is not about the lack of belief I’ve expressed.

1. where did the matter come from in the first place?

Matter pops into and out of existence all of the time. The universe appears to have 0 total energy, this would be explained very nicely if the big bang originated from a quantum vacuum fluctuation.

2. what changed to make it suddenly explode in the Big Bang?

This is a strange question, there wasn’t really an “explosion” in any conventional sense of the word, I suppose then the “bang” is somewhat of a misnomer. If you’re asking “why does space-time expand?” then in the very early universe, the physics isn’t clear enough to answer that. The Friedman equations tell you a ton about expansion at non-GUT/Planck energy scales though.

I agree with you that the Big Bang is not inconsistent with the description of the Biblical description of the creation of the universe.

Are you being serious or facetious? The biblical account of creation is a myth passed down by bronze age desert dwellers. It is wholly inconsistent with what we know about cosmology, the history of the earth/solar system, and evolutionary biology.

Robert W.

1. where did the matter come from in the first place?

What matter? Our current best understanding of the universe is that matter did not exist in the very early period of its formation.

2. what changed to make it suddenly explode in the Big Bang?

Why do you assume it was an explosion?

Personally- I think there is valid argument for a single omnicient god; provided that the conclusion also allows for the idea that he is an evil, conspiracy theory type paranoid, crazy, sadistic, leaking colostomy bag of a bastard, who happens to have a nice aesthetic sense, sometimes.

Hoverfrog,

What matter? Our current best understanding of the universe is that matter did not exist in the very early period of its formation.

Is there a name for this theory?

Why do you assume it was an explosion?

I assume explosion is a bad choice of words. i mean the cause that caused the point of singularity to start expanding at the speed of light

Robert W.

Is there a name for this theory?

Yeah. The Big Bang Theory.

In short we don’t know really how matter was created or what caused the Big Bang to occur. Everything was compressed to an infinitely dense point. Physics get wonky at that point and you can’t go farther than the Planck time anyways.

That’s complicated by the fact that we can’t imagine “nothingness”. Not just the absence of something, but literal nothingness. But that doesn’t discredit the theory or lead the conclusion that “god did it”.

You can’t even say that matter really came from nothing, because we already postulate the existence of a singularity as a starting point. That singularity expanded, released quarks and other elementary particles, which combined to form more complex matter, etc.

Robert W.

So is it your understanding that the Big bang theory supports creation of matter from nothing?

No. There’s this little thing called the conservation of mass. Matter is “made of” molecules which are in turn “made of” atoms. Mainly atoms consist of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are in turn “made of” quarks. Quarks have various intrinsic properties, including electric charge, color charge, spin, and mass. Quarks experience the fundamental interactions of neutrinos and it is these neutrinos that are theorised to be been around in the very early universe. To go further than this we’re looking at the theoretical Higg’s boson.

There’s not a lot in the way of “nothing” there.

I find it particularly amusing that this argument, a piece of Argument from Conscience, is used just before the Argument from Experience and Argument from Consent:

How can society obligate me? What right do my equals have to impose their values on me? Does quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is “society” God?

In both experience and consent, the argument is basically, strength in numbers. So many people believe, or have had religious experiences, its sill to think they’re wrong. Yet, they scoff at the idea that quantity makes quality.

The other thing I wanted to say is also from the Argument from Conscience. They claim that conscience cannot possibly come from something less than you (nature, animal instincts) nor from you yourself. But evolutionarily, this is very clearly where conscience comes from. It’s not at all difficult to imagine how conscience could have been a useful evolutionary trait, and there happen to have been simple evolutionary experiments, done with robots with simple genetic-like codes, that show that there is a natural tendency for at least some organisms in a group to have a sort of conscience, a sense of goodness.

I wish I could point out everything I found funny in the 20 arguments. But I only have 20 minutes before my math lecture starts, and that’s not nearly enough time. So, if anyone is look for a good, funny, quick read, here are my favorites:
5, 7, 9, 10, 12 (this one makes a particularly astounding jump in conclusions at step 4, quite the logistical magician’s trick), 13, 14, 16, 18
Okay, so I started that list, and realized that I wasn’t abbreviating it all that much. They’re all funny in their own way. Just read it all =)